Sunday of Saint Thomas
Last Sunday we heard the majestic opening of Saint John’s Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Today we hear what is, in many ways, its conclusion. After recounting the signs, teachings, trial, death, and burial of Jesus, Saint John brings the Gospel to its climax with the confession of Saint Thomas when the risen Christ appears before him. Showing the wounds of His passion, Jesus confronts Thomas with a choice: to believe or not to believe. And Thomas responds with the most direct and exalted confession in all the Gospels: “My Lord and my God.”
We know Thomas’s story well. His desire to see the risen Christ has become proverbial—“a doubting Thomas.” But the message for us today is not primarily about doubt as an obstacle to faith, as when Jesus calms the storm and rebukes the fearful disciples. Thomas’s struggle is of a different kind.
For Thomas, faith cannot be directed toward a dead man. Except for the beloved disciple—who believed at the sight of the empty tomb—Thomas is no different from the other disciples or from Mary Magdalene. All of them needed to encounter the risen Christ to believe in the resurrection. Thomas has heard their testimony, but he longs to see what they have seen.
Yet notice something important: Thomas does not walk away. He remains with the disciples, and they do not reject him. He stays within the community of faith, and within that communion, at the moment God chooses, faith is given to him. And when it comes, it comes not as an achievement or a skill, but as a gift—unexpected, overwhelming, and complete. His confession, “My Lord and my God”, is the Gospel’s final word on who Jesus truly is.
Jesus’s reply to Thomas—*Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe*—leads us to our own reflection today.
We, generations removed from Thomas, Mary, and the apostles, have their testimony written in the Gospel so that we too may encounter the risen Lord. And this witness connects directly to what we will do shortly when we gather at Roslyn Cemetery to sing together the victory hymn:
Christ is risen from the dead… and to those in the tombs He bestows life.
Our loved ones who have fallen asleep are themselves witnesses to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Their genuine acts of love and compassion were the works of God shining through them. For when Christians allow God’s love to take hold of them, they are transformed—made capable of a selfless love that is divine in origin. Christian life is a life turned outward, a new way of being with others. This is the life Christ promises.
And what better place than a cemetery for Christians to proclaim their certainty that those who were baptized into Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection—and who loved as Christ loves—are alive in Him. They shine today in the light of God’s countenance. Through the Cross, the Tomb, and the Resurrection, the separation between the living and the dead, between humanity and God, has been overcome.
At every funeral we hear the words of Christ from Saint John’s Gospel:
“He who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life… he has passed from death to life.”
Our gathering at the cemetery is not a remnant of pre-Christian ancestral ritual, though it may resemble one. Centuries ago, in Antioch, Saint John Chrysostom led the faithful to the cemetery on Great and Holy Friday to celebrate the liturgy among the tombs. He told them:
“Since today Jesus descended among the dead, for this reason we gather here… Know where you bring the body of your loved ones, and at what time you bring it—after the death of Christ, when the bonds of death have been severed.”
Our liturgical commemorations of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection are not barren rituals recalling past events. They make those events present and effective now. As another ancient Christian writer said of Holy Saturday:
“While Christ is below, breaking the bonds of death and filling Hades with light, we above celebrate, contemplating the resurrection.”
We no longer fear death, for through death we enter life eternal.
Let me conclude again with the words of Saint John Chrysostom.
While the death of Adam condemned those who followed him, the death of Christ raised up all who came before Him. Out of death, we have been made immortal. “The struggle was the Lord’s, yet the crown is ours.” Since the victory is ours, let us sing the victory hymn with confidence:
*Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O Hades, is your sting?*
These are the mighty deeds of the Cross.
